Rush Write - Xanadu (2007)

I dreamed of journeys. Every night I walked
Slog-foot through mountain passes in the snow.
Alone or in a draggled band we'd go
A thousand miles. The easier ways were blocked.
I dreamed arrivals: stumbling to a place,
An unexpected home behind the door,
The windows, gardens, wall, the stony floor,
Familiar as long-lost, loving face.

What has happened to the Journey and the Arrival, my own metaphorical path? I miss having the dreams. I feel like I'm floundering--a little--again--and maybe another journey is before me. It is frightening because I was so welcomed, loved, warm, and safe at my destination. This time the Journay doesn't feel so much toward a longed-for place of refuge, but out into the unknown, no end in sight, maybe no end at all.

Then, peace. But late I have begun to hear
The faint unsettling echo of a call.
It whispers to my soul, and my soul fears
That answering will cost, could lose me all.
I hear the echo in the dimming light,
Open the door and walk into the night.

Maybe I need to learn Buddhism and meditation. Maybe I need some kind of new Christianity. Maybe I need to study death. But the next step has something to do with spirituality--a word I've had little use for in the past--in my mind there was religion and there were actions, and all that vague spirituality talk was talk of air and nothing. I have friends and acquaintances who are always finding a new shaman or discovering a new meditation technique and getting in touch with their inner Goddess and so forth. (Obligatory nod to cutting-edge neuroscience and the right temporal lobe's association with human religiosity--assume that I've already mentioned the caveats, etc.)

Something about it still matters. Something about Christianity still matters to me, and I can't figure it out. It has all my life been elusive. My mind skitters away from it--maybe it is antipathetic to analysis and logic. Sometimes I feel like my logical, analytic, decision-making self is nearly disconnected from my emotional, creative self. Or my creativity is so much under the control of analytic intellect that it is not creative at all. Little seems to get through from my dream-self.

But the content-focus right now seems to be death. That is also unsettling. God and death.